Story Starters Teaching Resources
Explore story starters for kids created by teachers for teachers like you to encourage creative writing in the primary classroom.
This collection of narrative prompts has been designed by the Teach Starter teacher team to help you help your students as they perfect their narrative story writing skills. Aligned with the Australian literacy curriculum, the collection is packed with options for starting sentences and stories, as well as writing stimulus sheets you can use to encourage young writers to unleash their creativity!
Is this your first year teaching writing lessons? Or maybe you're just looking for some fresh ideas to incorporate story starters into your lesson plans? Read on for a primer from our teacher team!
What Are Story Starters?
The name may say it all — or maybe not! A story starter is a sentence or a short phrase that's created to spark the imaginations of your students and help them kick off a story.
These short bits of text provide students with an example of how to begin their story. They stimulate students' imaginations and help beat back writer's block!
They also go by a number of other names, including:
- Narrative starters
- Narrative prompts
- Story prompts
- Story openers
Is a Story Starter the Same as a Writing Prompt?
Story starters can be considered writing prompts. After all, these phrases or sentences work to prompt a student to continue the narrative.
But not every writing prompt is a story starter! A writing prompt provides our students with ideas that they can use to begin writing, but the words of the prompt do not have to appear within the actual text of the story.
A good story starter, on the other hand, will actually function as the first few words or sentences of a story.
What Makes a Good Story Starter?
When our teaching team sits down to craft a good story starter to add to our collection — and for you to add to your lesson plans — we have a few criteria in mind.
- The story starter should hint at the theme of the story.
- The story opener should not provide students with too much information — the goal is to leave it to students to craft major story details using their own imaginations!
- The story starter should hook the reader by revealing an intriguing element of the story.
Some of the elements we like to include in our story starters include:
- Questions
- An introduction to a particular character or characters
- Descriptions of the setting
- Dialogue
- Action
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Blank Comic Strip Templates
Print blank comic book templates created by teachers to help students write their own comics.
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Narrative Prompts Posters
A set of 20 posters to display as narrative story prompts for students.
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Story Ideas – Character, Setting, and Complication Cards
Help your students choose a topic to write about with this set of 36 character, setting and compilation task cards.
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Seven Sensational Story Starters PowerPoint
Inspire creative and catching narrative story starters with this story starters set of teaching slides.
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5 Narrative Writing Stimulus Sheets
Writing stimulus sheets with a narrative focus.
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Narrative Sentence Starter Cards
Thirty sentence starter cards for narratives.
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Magical Story Starters Task Cards
Get your students writing magical stories with this set of story starter task cards.
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Super Sentence Starter Sack
Choose a sentence starter from the Super Sentence Sack to start your students off and writing.
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Spring Writing Prompts
Celebrate Spring with Spring writing worksheets for the early years.
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Topic Sentence Starter Cards
A pack of 32 narrative, persuasive and report writing sentence starter cards.
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Fairy Tales Settings Posters
A set of 6 fairytale story settings background posters.
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Inspiring Story Starters Task Cards
Get your students writing inspiring stories with this set of story starter task cards.
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Objects in the Sky – Writing Prompts
Describe objects in the sky, such as the clouds, moon and sun, with this set of 8 space science writing prompts.
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Mysterious Story Setting Background Posters
A set of 3 mysterious story setting posters for students to use in a variety of ways.
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Roll to Create a Silly Book Title – Differentiated Writing Activity
Print a differentiated literacy activity using dice and a chart to create a silly book title and storybook.
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Gold Miners' Bulletin Project
A creative writing newspaper project in which students design and write the front page of an imagined newspaper from the Australian Gold Rush era.
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Narrative Setting Prompts Posters
A set of 2 posters giving ideas for the setting of a narrative.
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5 Ws and 1 H Planning Worksheet for Narrative Writing
A 5 Ws and 1 H worksheet to use in the classroom.
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Grandparents Day Writing Prompts
Combine your writing lessons and Grandparents Day with this set of writing prompt worksheets.
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Narrative Setting Circularama Templates
A set of circular diorama templates that combine to create three scenes.
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Narrative Writing Poster
A poster to encourage your students to think about narrative writing.
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Roll to Create a Christmas Story - Writing Prompt
Roll the die to generate a fun Christmas writing activity with a roll-to-create Christmas worksheet.
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Haunted House Worksheets - Descriptive Writing Activity
Draw and write about scary Halloween houses with a printable Halloween descriptive writing activity pack.
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Roll-a-Scary Story Starter - Halloween Writing Prompt
Inspire some spooktacular Halloween writing with a roll-to-create Halloween Writing Prompt creator.
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Farm-Themed Flashcards and Writing Prompts
Build vocabulary and writing skills with this ocean-themed writing activity.
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Adorable Animal Finger Puppets Template
Download a set of 12 animal finger puppets to use when teaching poetry, creating narratives and more.
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What Happened Next? Jack and the Beanstalk Writing Template
Finish the Jack and the Beanstalk story in your own words.
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The 5 Ws and 1 H Questions for Narrative Writing Poster
A 5 Ws and 1 H poster to display in the classroom.
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Halloween Narrative Writing Prompts — Finish the Story Writing Activity
Use this printable 'Finish the Story' writing prompt and craft to develop narrative writing skills this Halloween season.
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The Relief Teacher Monster - Halloween Craft and Write
This Halloween, inspire your struggling writers to write toe-curling tales of a day spent with a Relief Teacher Monster!
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Novel Study - Alternate Story Ending Worksheet
A worksheet which encourages students to write an alternate ending to a shared class story.
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Story Building Dice Activity
A set of 3 dice to use when to generating ideas for creative writing.